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The Pencil of Nature (1844-46)

by William Henry Fox Talbot

Part III: PLATE XIII. QUEEN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD. ENTRANCE GATEWAY

About The Pencil of Nature
Part I.
Publisher's note, frontispiece, and title page.
Introductory Remarks.
Brief Historical Sketch of the Invention of the Art.
Plate I. Part of Queen's College, Oxford.
Plate II. View of the Boulevards at Paris.
Plate III. Articles of China.
Plate IV. Articles of Glass
Plate V. Bust of Patroclus.

Part II.
Plate VI. The Open Door
Plate VII. Leaf of a Plant
Plate VIII. A Scene in a Library
Plate IX. Fac-simile of an Old Printed Page
Plate X. The Haystack
Plate XI. Copy of a Lithographic Print
Plate XII. The Bridge of Orleans.
Part III.
Plate XIII. Queen's College, Oxford, Entrance Gateway
Plate XIV. The Ladder.
Plate XV. Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire.

Part IV.
Plate XVI. Cloisters of Lacock Abbey.
Plate XVII. Bust of Patroclus.
Plate XVIII. Gate of Christchurch
Part V.
Plate XIX. The Tower of Lacock Abbey
Plate XX. Lace
Plate XXI. The Martyr's Monument
Part VI.
Plate XXII. Westminster Abbey
Plate XXIII. Hagar in the Desert.
Plate XXIV. A Fruit Piece.


PLATE XIII. QUEEN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD. ENTRANCE GATEWAY

IN the first plate of this work I have represented an angle of this building. Here we have a view of the Gateway and central portion of the College. It was taken from a window on the opposite side of the High Street.

In examining photographic pictures of a certain degree of perfection, the use of a large lens is recommended, such as elderly persons frequently employ in reading. This magnifies the object two or three times, and often discloses a multitude of minute details, which were previously unobserved and unsuspected. It frequently happens, moreover -- and this is one of the charms of photography -- that the operator himself discovers on examination, perhaps long afterwards, that he has depicted many things he had no notion of at the time. Sometimes inscriptions and dates are found upon the buildings, or printed placards most irrelevant, are discovered upon their walls: sometimes a distant dial-plate is seen, and upon it -- unconsciously recorded -- the hour of the day at which the view was taken.



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